Policy interventions and components overview

From IMAGE

Policy interventions are implemented in a model component (mostly one). The result of this implementation affects other model components. Each component contains a Policy intervention Table on its 'Policy issues' page describing the effects of policy interventions. Use the link in the 'Affects components' column to navigate to the components Policy issues page, (*) denotes the implementing component.

It is possible to prescribe the shares of renewables, CCS technology, nuclear power and other forms of generation capacity. This measure influences the amount of capacity installed of the technology chosen.

Change in grazing intensity, usually more intensive. This would require better management of grasslands, including for example the use of grass-clover mixtures and fertilisers, bringing the length of the grazing season in tune with the period of grass production, and rotations.

Exogenously set the market shares of certain fuel types. This can be done for specific analyses or scenarios to explore the broader implications of increasing the use of, for instance, biofuels, electricity or hydrogen and reflects the impact of fuel targets.

Adaptation to climate change reduces climate damage. The model can optimally calculate the optimal adaptation level based on marginal adaptation costs and marginal avoided damage, but an alternative adaptation level can be used as well.

Developed countries could provide financial resources to assist developing countries by implementation of mitigation and adaptation policies. To mobilise these funds, several mechanisms exist, of which the effect can be analysed

Policies to enhance the use of biofuels, especially in the transport sector. In the Agricultural economy component only 'first generation' crops are taken into account. The policy is implemented as a budget-neutral policy from government perspective, e.g. a subsidy is implemented to achieve a certain share of biofuels in fuel production and an end-user tax is applied to counterfinance the implemented subsidy.

Reduce the health impacts of malnutrition and inadequate access to safe drinking water, basic sanitaion and modern sources of energy, through, for example, improving female education, promoting good hygiene and providing good indoor good ventilation

Improve the quality of access to drinking water, sanitation and modern sources of energy, through, for example, household connections to drinking-water supply and the use of LPG or kerosene instead of traditional biomass on improved biomass stoves

Improved rainwater management assumes a decrease in the evaporative losses from rainfed agriculture and the creation of small scale reservoirs to harvest rainwater during the wet period and use it during a dryer period. Both measures lead to more efficient use of water and increased yields on rainfed fields.

Exogenously set improvement in efficiency. Such improvements can be introduced for the submodels that focus on particular technologies, for example, in transport, heavy industry and households submodels.

A change in production characteristics, such as milk production per animal, carcass weight and off-take rates, which will also have an impact on the feed conversion ratio; in general, this will be lower in more productive animals

Increasing storage capacity assumes that the total water volume stored in large reservoirs will increase. This can either be established by an increase of the capacity of existing reservoirs, or by building new reservoirs.

Better integration of manure in crop production systems. This consists of recycling of manure that under the baseline scenario ends up outside the agricultural system (e.g. manure used as fuel), in crop systems to substitute fertiliser. In addition, there is improved integration of animal manure in crop systems, particularly in industrialised countries.

A change in the distribution of the production over pastoral and mixed systems; usually to a larger share of the production in mixed systems, which inherently changes the overall feed conversion ratios of ruminants.

Sustainable forest management aims for maintaining long-term harvest potential and good ecological status of forests (e.g. the nutrient balance and biodiversity). This can be implemented by (i) enlarging the return period when a forest can be harvested again; (ii) only using certain fractions of the harvested biomass and leave the remaining part in the forests.